JOY AND PAIN IN UNEQUAL MEASURES PART THREE: A HOMECOMING, A DISASTER, A TRAGEDY AND A TRIUMPH !!!

Get the weekend out of the way by working because I’m missing my wife and I might just as well for the overtime and take the following Wednesday off after Haddy's return flight.

The family are all ok.

They are all back safely in The Gambia with no major van hitches.

Obviously this is going to make a huge gap in the lives of Uncle Sebastian and his family.

It’s big enough in ours.

Aunt Rose or Ta’ Roz (Tante Rose) was always welcome and welcoming and I know Haddy is going to be very upset when she arrives back here on Tuesday night.

At least flights in from The Gambia are consistent.

Reckon on getting to the airport at about half-ten to eleven and then hang around for about two hours minimum.

At some time after midnight you should see the passenger you are waiting for.

Anybody waiting to get a passenger through the usual snarl-up in the second-class citizen queue going through immigration is going to be in for the longest wait…

And that, of course, is me.

You know when they’re starting to go through because all the tanned or lobster-like holidaymakers start appearing through the doors in the arrivals area.

And you wait…

And you wait…

And you wait…

And finally, at about ten minutes to one in the morning, two complete hours after the flight has landed, you finally get to see your wife.

Or I get to see my wife actually.

It now takes between two to three hours depending on traffic and roadworks to drive home, and I have to be honest, it’s exhausting.

But at least we’re both off work tomorrow.

Haddy had said she may go in for her evening job, but she’ll see how she feels first ?

She’s tired from having to wake early in the morning, say her farewells to the family and travel virtually all night.

She needs sleep, but I bet you the body clocks are fucked…

About four hours sleep and we’re awake again.

What can you say ?

The Rhythms gig has been slowly going pear-shaped whilst all this has been going on.

If it wasn’t enough to go through all this family stuff, the bureaucracy of the organisation is beginning to appall…

We have no gig flyers and so we cannot actually advertise the events and I’m beginning to tear out whatever hair is left and scream loudly.

There is a reason for this.

We have to advertise with a ‘corporate logo’.

Unfortunately they hadn’t been printed yet…

Two weeks before the actual event and nobody has seen a flyer.

So I fired off a few e-mails…

All I get back is corporate bullshit.

Hey !!!  Do you lot want a fucking gig or don’t you ?

I’m happy to put the thing on, but you people have to pull your weight and stop this crap or you won’t have a fucking gig at all over the whole weekend because nobody will know the bloody thing is on.  

Success.

We finally have flyers.

Unfortunately they don’t actually say where or when the events are taking place.

It’s a catch-all flyer that advertises all the events and all the venues without a single date or a line-up.

So I blot my copy-book by going apeshit on Facebook…

Ooooh, that got a reaction, didn't it ?

One side is telling me I shouldn’t do that and the other side is agreeing that these people are incompetent.

Doh !!!

Fuck it !

Do it yourself…

So I did.

I remade the flyers in forty eight hours and had them out on the street in fifty.

You can’t do that.

Gig flyer by Al Maceachern

Errr… Actually I can, and what’s more I just did and if you want people to come then you better learn that the best way is the way that actually works and has done for aeons…
And apparently I wasn't the only one...
One of the band's had done their own, too.

I guess I’m the bad guy again ?

Ah fuck ‘em !

All this ‘corporate’ bullshit.

All we’re doing is putting on a gig and since you asked me to do it, get the fuck out of the way and just let us get on with it.

This shit drives you nuts.

Is it any wonder that the industry is full of crazy people with attitude problems ?

And my wife has just returned to find all this crap going on…

NOOOOOO !!!

The news is on Facebook…

Jon Falconer: 2nd July 1970-7th July 2013 as I'll always remember him...

Jon Falconer died yesterday.

He was taking a short break with Martin on their boat and apparently had felt unwell and so they’d stopped the boat, Martin had got off and gone looking for a local Dr’s surgery, come back and found Jon dead at the tiller…

Christ !!!

Your heart just goes out to the poor guy…

The funeral won’t be until later because of the autopsy.

For those who don’t know about this stuff, it’s because Jon died outside of his own Dr’s jurisdiction.

What can you say in moments like these ?

Everything else in your life becomes immaterial.

This is like a never-ending bad dream.

It seems like everybody who knew him has left a tribute somewhere.

I’m gonna miss him.

As someone once said, ‘The revolution is gonna be harder to fight now, cos there’s one less of us…’

But he’ll still be with all of us on the barricades come the time.

Do I want to dedicate the Rhythms gig to him ?

It’s a nice thought, but we’ll see about that on the night ?

I went to the Don Letts gig on the Friday.

Don was ok, and his son’s a good mixer but he didn’t really ‘come over’ to the audience.

It was like he’d submerged his personality which always comes through on the radio show.

Bit disappointing if truth be told, and apparently I was not the only one who felt like that.

I left Fort Hope on the Saturday.

To be honest I’d sooner rest before the Sunday.

Haddy’s got a few things to do on the Sunday so she’s going to join me later.

Me ?  I’m there early for the soundchecks.

Because it’s a Sunday night we can’t go on until midnight so we’ve worked it so that we finish between ten-thirty and eleven.

Unfortunately this means that The Astronauts have to actually start their set at about seven-fifteen.

It’s a bit early but it can’t be helped.

All three bands will be playing their normal sets.

Which they do, admirably.

The Astronauts storm it, setting a bench-mark that Blyth Power and Scum of Toytown are going to have to match to even be considered contenders.









Give Mark and the guys a bit of adversity and they usually rise above it.

I know they usually get labelled ‘folk-punk’ but there is nothing folky about The Astronauts.

Alternative is as The Astronauts does, and they are definitely alternative.

The Astronauts: Photo by Grant Meaby

 

The lyrics make sense and stay relevant even if they were written twenty years ago and that is one of the marks of a really intelligent mind.

Mark old mate, you’ve done it again.

Here's a snippet I found on youtube... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESW5hbq92GU
 

On any other night Blyth Power would have topped the bill.

Tonight however they were up against Scum of Toytown and so we’d asked them to play second giving the hometown crowd their own to end the evening.

And Blyth stormed it.
Unfortunately, it would seem nobody thought to film it ?

The mosh-pit went ballistic in the last twenty minutes and gave a foretaste of things to come.

Talking to Joseph after the event, he reckoned it was one of the most relaxed and enjoyable Blyth gigs ever.

Easily in their ten best in his opinion, and certainly ‘up there with a shout’ in Annie’s.

Must have done something right, then ?

Which leaves us the’ headliners’.

‘Allo Hitchin…’ said Jon, and away they went.

Many more new songs than the last time I’d seen them.

The older ones that everybody knew mixed in with the new ones to complete a whole new set and it was absolutely majestic.

The mosh-pit started up on the second track and never stopped, even for the new ones.

There ya go, peep's... Something to watch... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXreHOGLOHc

Ska-punk, when done as well as this, just gets everybody up and dancing.

Give me the stage and some able musicians and I’ll put the gig on for you.

Just keep the extraneous bullshit to a minimum because it serves no real purpose apart from massaging egos, and I really have no time for that.

It seems like those that came enjoyed themselves ?

The strangest fact of all came after the event.

Scum, as is their wont, always want a large ‘pest-list’ to get as many of their friends in for free and

I’d kept them down to eight on the night.

If you added those eight to those paying then it would have equalled those that paid for Fort Hope on the Saturday, which also exactly equalled the amount paying to see Don Letts on the Friday.

That’s today’s bit of true but useless information.

Strange, but true.

Arcadeclectic keeps it’s end up.

Now I’m finally going home to sleep.

Last out as usual…

Much to Haddy’s disgust !!!